Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Acquitted!

This will certainly make big headlines in the UK and the English-speaking Japanese press. It's a truly remarkable verdict given the evidence about what he did, including two dead bodies, his own home videos, telephone records linking him to the deceased, etc etc.

The finger-pointing seems most appropriately aimed at a judicial system that relies almost entirely on confessions (about 98% of cases, wrung out of suspects during lengthy interrogations with no effective right to a legal defence). The effect of this is that in the rare cases in which a confession is not forthcoming, the police don't seem to have any idea how to proceed competently. I suppose we should be grateful that he got convicted of the stuff that was actually on tape.